


stars have their moment

by something_pithy



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), I Tried, Maybe some angst, Porn With Feels, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:57:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/something_pithy/pseuds/something_pithy
Summary: Her eyes were closed; each breath was a ragged, trembling little gasp. Control wasn’t even the goal anymore – just managing the pain seemed like enough at this point.The ripples in the Force were indistinguishable from the fevered dreams that had awakened her, and at first, she thought they were just aftershocks. It wasn’t until she felt his voice – deep, resonant, vibrating through her like an engine hum – that she opened her eyes enough to see the way he blocked out the light in edges blurred by pain or fever or both, maybe.“What did you do?” he asked.a series of tensions via force bond.





	1. a night of fire and noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FremenOfHonor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FremenOfHonor/gifts).



> story and chapter titles courtesy of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.
> 
> This was written in response to the following request for the RFFA Valentine's Day Fic Exchange:
> 
> _Something with heart. Something that will make me laugh softly and cry. The same feeling I get when I watch the finale of Season 5 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer._
> 
> I don't know if I ended up fulfilling the prompt, but I did my level best! <3 I hope you like it, FremenOfHonor!
> 
> FINALLY, SO MANY THANKS to my lovely, wonderful, super talented and helpful betas for this fic, @kimaracretak and @aionimica. Without them, this fic would have been wack, seriously.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dreams, visions, injuries, etc.

She woke with a gasp, strangled by her nightshirt, the closeness of her bunk, by the tangle of visions, images, sensations choking up her dreams.  


Instinct was to throw herself out of the bunk and into something – anything – to distract her from the shadows of her subconscious. So she tried to do just that – only to cry out at the pain in her side, pressing a hand into the agonizing burn, landing hard on the metal floor. Leaning back against the bunk, she tried to drag air into her lungs in breaths as even as she could make them.  


Everything ached and burned. Thirstier than she’d been since Jakku, she thought of the canteen in the compartment just above the head of the bunk; reaching it seemed like a longer shot than making it to hyperspace on foot at this point, though.  


The weeks were wearing on her. It felt like she’d been flying forever, fastidiously keeping her mind calm, meditative, blocking any distraction – any intrusion.  


However, a supply run on Tatooine had gone awry, and while she’d managed to keep the _Falcon_ spaceworthy, she was worse for wear. Staying on course while getting enough rest to recover from her injuries and maintaining control of her frustration and fear was proving more and more difficult every day.  


Today, as it turned out, would be the day when she failed.  


Her eyes were closed; each breath was a ragged, trembling little gasp. Control wasn’t even the goal anymore – just managing the pain seemed like enough at this point.  
  
The ripples in the Force were indistinguishable from the fevered dreams that had awakened her, and at first, she thought they were just aftershocks. It wasn’t until she felt his voice – deep, resonant, vibrating through her like an engine hum – that she opened her eyes enough to see the way he blocked out the light in edges blurred by pain or fever or both, maybe.  


“What did you do?” he asked.  


She laughed – weak. Breathless. It hurt. It was almost unrecognizable as such, but laugh she did.  


He knelt down next to her – he must have, anyway, she was sure. She didn’t quite catch it, but when she opened her eyes again (had she closed them?), the light was bright again, and she felt his breath across her neck.  
  
“Damnit, Rey,” he hissed. She felt the fabric of her shirt moving, and there was something clever or sharp or both floating at the edges of her mind, but she couldn’t quite bring it together to push out of her mouth. Instead she asked,  
  
“Are you here?”  


Her brow furrowed. It sounded much fainter than she’d thought it would.  


She was shifting, moving – it hurt, and she bit her lip against another cry, so it came out as something pathetic – a whimper, maybe, except she would never in her life be caught dead with a whimper in her throat.  


She didn’t think of much more after that.  


**  


The next time she woke up, it was more gradual, and she didn’t want to open her eyes. She was curled up on her uninjured side, the hum of the ship a comforting lull.  


But there was something else, too – that presence, that weight, that ripple in the force letting her know she wasn’t alone.  


She opened her eyes.  


The light was being blocked again.  


She sat up swiftly again, too fast, remembering a split second too late about her side –  


but it didn’t hurt.  


There was only the light-headed headrush of hunger, a sensation that had become a bit foreign but never truly forgotten, and of having been prone for too long. Even so, she instantly had her back to the wall, reaching for her staff or her lightsaber, neither of which was there.  


“If I’d wanted to kill you,” he told her, his voice too even, too calm, “you wouldn’t have woken up.”  


Kylo was sitting across from her bunk on a throne.  


His throne.  


He looked almost comfortable.  


It took a minute to focus completely, to clear her mind, but it was a close enough thing for her to say,  


“I’m willing to bet you’d have to actually be here to kill me,” she told him.  


“Overlooking the fact that tending to your wounds would have been counterproductive in that regard,” he said, his voice still calm, matter-of-fact, “if I was able to heal you, it seems likely I’d be able to kill you just as easily.”  


She was quiet for a beat; wet her lips. “I suppose that’s fair,” she admitted finally.  


He tipped his head slightly in acknowledgment.  


“I guess it would be hoping too much that you’d tell me where you are so we could get you into a bacta tank?” he said.    


She arched a brow. Her posture had relaxed; she pulled one knee up to her chest, her other leg dangling over the edge of the bunk.  


“Right, brilliant, I’ll just fix you a cuppa while you’re on your way,” she told him. Then, at his dry, unimpressed look, she told him, “I feel fine.”  


“Right,” he said slowly, his voice low, resonant. She tried to ignore the way it hummed through her. “Unfortunately, you won’t for long.”  


She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that a threat?”  


He looked like he might have smiled; instead, he shook his head.  


“No, it’s just… healing isn’t exactly the purview of the Dark Side. I’m afraid your improved condition is only temporary.”  


She cut a glare at him.  


“Of course,” she said. “I suppose I should have known.”  


“Probably,” he said wryly, though his fingers were curled tight, white knuckled, around the ends of the arms of the elaborate seat. “Rey, don’t be foolish. You need medical attention.”  


“Yes, well, fortunately, you’re not the only game in the galaxy on that score,” she told him, rising from her bunk, moving toward the cockpit of the _Falcon_.  


He rose, following her.  


“Maybe not, but I can’t help but think if you had easier access to medical tech, you wouldn’t have been in the state you were when I found you,” he pointed out.  


“Well, hopefully whatever you did will last long enough for me to change that,” she retorted before she cast another glare at him over her shoulder.  


His jaw was tight, his eyes even darker than usual, and kriff, he was so _tall_.  


“Should I have just left you, then?” he gritted out.  


“I would have made do,” she told him as she took a seat at the controls. “I always have.”  


It took her a moment, waiting for his reply with a breath caught in her throat, to realize that he was gone.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> You can send me asks, requests, or just wander around aimlessly at my tumblr: [something-pithy.tumblr.com](http://something-pithy.tumblr.com).


	2. 'tis a long-suffering shackle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rejections abound!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title courtesy of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

  
He stalked to the training room, rage burgeoning in his blood, blooming from roots of pain and abandonment and wounds that had been cut by others first, but that burned more deeply for her touch. It was a simple enough thing to order five knights into train; an even simpler thing to destroy them, to unleash the depths of his fury, his loss, the enormity of his own sins and those committed against him on them. To bring the weight of his own physical power and the strength of the Force within him on those hapless knights, to make them pay for crimes he couldn’t distinguish as his, hers, Han Solo’s, Luke Skywalker’s, his mother’s, his grandfather’s – it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because they were all just fuel: potent, combustible, white-hot, and burning through him and then them until they were screaming their submission, that they yielded, they yielded, and it was only that – the pleas distinguishing them from his father, his uncle, Snoke, or anyone else -- that brought him back, that had him dismissing them, that had him realizing that they were bleeding and choking and a bit broken.

  
That he was bleeding, himself.  


**

 

When he’d watched the hatch of the _Falcon_ close, he hadn’t expected to feel her again.  


And he hadn’t, for a time. A long enough time that he began to think their bond had truly been severed.  


There had been rage, of course. All-consuming, blistering, bone-cracking rage. The levels of rejection were too many and too close. That she’d flown off in the _Falcon_ had added a layer of insult to the injury that wasn’t to be borne.  


As it turned out, even though he couldn’t feel her, she haunted him. As often as he dreamt of all his sins and sacrifices, he dreamt of her; sometimes the burn of a lightsaber, sometimes a plea for his redemption, sometimes skin too silky for that of a scavenger, that took turns taunting him with the murder of his past (murders – let the past die, but it took far more than one blow, as it turned out).  
  
At first, the dreams were just becoming more vivid, more frequent. He heard her voice more clearly; saw her not in surreal dreamscapes, but surrounded by the alloys of the _Falcon_ , or deserts that were not her own.

 

Those too-real visions were warnings that he knew he should heed. His conflicted feelings for her needed to be resolved, but he didn’t know how. Was she a weakness, or a strength? The ache she caused could be fuel, but could be a distraction. But this limbo could not stand.

  
And then he did feel her.

  
He’d had no intention of coming to her – she’d shut the door, hadn’t she? Let her come to him; speak the words; say what she wanted. That she wanted him.  


But it wasn’t like that – and he couldn’t spend much time considering what it was like, because he felt her fever, the pain, a kind of pain she didn’t know how to use as fuel, not the way she’d need to in order to save herself.  


Or maybe that’s what he told himself later to justify his recklessness.  


The thought of leaving her to her fate barely flitted across his mind, and was summarily dismissed. Whatever liability logic indicated she posed was nothing to the instinctive recognition that no strength, no power mattered in a galaxy without her in it.

 

And yet even after he’d saved her life, she rejected him. Scorned him.  


It was as it would always be, then.  


**

 

He stalked back to his chamber, punching a wound in his thigh, his breath heavy, ragged, his jaw and fists clenched tight.  


As he stripped off his bloody tunic, he almost didn’t notice the shudder in the air, the glimmer of light cutting through the darkness around him.  


He was already snarling, his lightsaber gripped tight in his palm, when he turned to face her.  


But she wasn’t poised to fight – she didn’t even look angry. Her features were softer, sleepy, even, her eyes heavy-lidded, lips parted, hair loose – had he ever seen her hair loose?  


“Ben?” she said, her voice sleep-softened, just a bit scratchy.  


Before he could correct her, she was blinking – moving toward him, eyes sharper.  


“Are you hurt?”  


It froze him, the genuine concern, her hand outstretched, bruises exposed on her bare arm. Looking down, he saw the gash in his thigh through the rent fabric of his pants.  


“It’s fine,” he said sharply, stepping back, away from her, away from her touch. “I’m fine.”  


“No you’re not,” she shot back, looking up at him, incredulous. “You’re bleeding, and there’s a cut on your thigh as long as my forearm!”  


“I don’t need your help,” he told her, tunic still bunched in his fist, unable to look away from her.  


“Kylo,” she began, gentle, like he was some feral animal to be tamed. The notion was laughable – as though he were the wild thing, raised as a savage.  


“Is this where you bring me over to the light?” he asked, mocking. “You’ll heal me better than I can heal you because you’ll be using the Light Side of the Force?”  


He sneered.  


“Spare me, little scavenger.” He could see her recoil for an instant – some flash, so brief, of hurt – before her face hardened and her hand dropped.  


“You don’t have to act like this,” she told him. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”  


“Oh?” he asked. “And how is it to be then, little Jedi? You’re pure and good enough to heal me, but I’ll only heal you to lure you into my evil clutches?”  


Her jaw was tight now, and so were her fists.  


Good.  


He smiled then.  


“Oh, now what’s that, little Jedi? Those feelings don’t seem very Light, do they?”  


“You are an arse. hole,” she ground out before she turned on her heel and stalked out of his quarters – or perhaps into her own.  


It was hard to tell.  


Either way, for a moment there was a lingering wisp of her scent and then –  


He was alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> You can send me asks, requests, or just wander around aimlessly at my tumblr: [something-pithy.tumblr.com](http://something-pithy.tumblr.com).


	3. we make a little history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here come the pronz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this title is from Nick Cave, too!

She woke in pain – so much sharp, excruciating pain.

She knew the healing was wearing off like he’d warned her it would, and while she’d been well enough for long enough to set the course for Dantooine, her breaths were too shallow now to be able to navigate, and when she put her hand to her side, she realized she was bleeding again.

 _Kriff_.

This time, though, he was next to her – they were in his bed and hers, but he was bleeding, too, with a wound that mirrored hers.

It struck her as funny, in that moment, that they were at the same eye level, but this meant that her feet were probably somewhere near his shins.

She didn’t laugh, though, when he turned his head to look at her.

His face was bruised, battered; she reached for his hand and he hissed. She looked down, and through the haze of pain, she saw that it was badly discolored, broken. She took a shuddering, wet breath, and he scowled.

“I told you… it wouldn’t… last…” he told her.

“Well… even a broken… chronometer… is right twice a day…” she told him with a little cough.

It tasted coppery.

He shifted, reaching for her side. She couldn’t bring herself to move away, instead focusing on her breath.

There was a glow to his eyes, she could have sworn, and relief – warmth, heat, more. It wasn’t painless – it wasn’t even soothing. But it felt right, flesh and bone and tissue knitting back together, being set back to rights, even though – even though something in the Force resisted of it, like a wild beast saddled without having been broken. She gasped at the sensation, wincing, but he caught her gaze then, steady – steady.

“ _Stay with me_ ,” he said, but she couldn’t tell if he said it aloud or in her mind. Either way, stay she did, sliding her hand over his, now, but as he mended her, she touched it, touched him, felt it – the Force was moving in his hand, too.

 

She shifted her other hand to touch his face. Then, as though it had always been there, a rhythm, the tattoo of a heartbeat between them, pulses of energy, and she couldn’t tell if it was light or dark, but she felt it, and she felt him. She saw the broken places, the bruised and bleeding, lacerated and abraded and she closed her eyes and set it back to how it should be, how it belonged, how they belonged.

  
How they belonged.

When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her, eyes dark, pupils blown, lips parted, and their breath was matched, heavy and rapid, to their pulses and their skin and she was still touching him, fingers on his now smooth, unswollen brow. The energy was there still, between them, and it was nothing, nothing at all, to lean in and press her lips to his.

But it couldn’t be this easy – nothing could be this easy, she should have known better, because he pulled back, watching her, breath in tatters now.

“What – what is this?” he asked.

She didn’t have an answer for him, because she didn’t know, not exactly.

“It’s not a promise,” she told him, though her fingers threading into his hair were maybe meant to take the sting out of that.

He huffed a mirthless laugh, but his thumb stroked over her hip even so.

“Of course not,” he told her. “Jedi can’t make promises like these.”

She scowled at him, then, because they couldn’t even touch – couldn’t even –

“Can’t we just have this?” she demanded in a whisper. “Does everything have to be a fight?”

The sadness in his eyes took her off-guard, and his thumb remained gentle as it stroked her hipbone. He was quiet for a long moment before he responded.

“Yes and no,” he said with something almost like a smile except for how almost melancholic it was.

Then he leaned in to kiss her again.

And he was tentative, at first, disbelieving, maybe, or perhaps just afraid to scare her off, but _no – no, not now, Ben, not now_ , because she kissed him harder on his lush mouth, and when it came down to it, the few encounters she’d had had been swift and clumsy and unskilled, but she had never wanted like this before, nothing like this, and her hand slid from his brow to his neck and she pulled herself closer to him, parting her lips to his and then there was the slick slide of tongues and lips and tasting and sucking his lower lip and a nip, and his hand sliding over her hip and she kissed him more fully as a reward.

  
And there thankfully wasn’t much fabric between them, because she could feel the heat of him through her sleep pants and the thin cloth of her shirt, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and it was times like these she thought the gods must be real. Instinct and eagerness led the way as she pushed him onto his back and slid her body over his, grinding her core inexpertly against him, and she felt him smiling under her kiss. She nipped him again, because he didn’t get to laugh at her just because she’d been alone her whole life and hadn’t gotten the chance to fuck the way everyone else did and –

she was _not_ going to think about that now because now her hands were on his chest and they were still kissing and his hands on her hips and her hips on his hips were finding a rhythm, and rhythm was a thing she understood because everything had a rhythm, everything – machines and people and the Force and –

  
oh, yes.

_Pleasure._

She pushed up a bit, then, and his lips were kiss-swollen – she slid one of her hands into his hair, carding her fingers through the silken mass. And he looked up at her and their breath was still ragged, but better this time, and she rolled her hips slower now, sensual, and she could feel it – she could feel it through him and through herself.

  
“Is this – is this OK?” he asked, one hand sliding to her waist, under her shirt.

“Yes,” she said, breathless, eyes luminous. “This is OK.”

She grinned, then, something barbarous in it before she sat straight up, rolling her hips on him again, her lids half-closing as she felt the hardness of his cock against the core of her, as she grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, baring herself to him.

She put her hands back on his chest, rocking back and forth now, something savage and hard and powerful coiling in her, building and winding and swelling and he grinned back up at her now, one hand firm on her hip, following her rhythm with his hips as the other slid up to her breast, palmed it, thumbed her nipple.

Lip bitten, she arched into his touch, rocking harder against him, careless, faster, and his bass of his groan rolled through her.

“ _Kylo_ ,” she hissed, her voice a bit hoarse as she twisted on him, and everything got tighter and tighter until – until –

She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes and a dam broke and fuck that was fine, that was – she didn’t know what it was, she blanked for a minute as it crashed into her, in her, her body clenching around nothing, shuddering, her nails pressing into his chest as she moaned this – this release, this…

She opened her eyes, heavy lidded, moving more languidly now, looking down into his eyes – his pupils blown, his lips parted, watching her – and she leaned down and kissed him, losing the rhythm a bit as she kept rocking against his cock, slick and smooth and –

It was sudden when she found herself on her back. She should have seen it coming, but she didn’t, and so she blinked up at him and laughed, He gave her a little smirk, leaning down to kiss her, his hand sliding between her legs, stroking – and she squirmed, oversensitive, biting her lip again.

She didn’t know if she’d spoken aloud or not, but he shifted his fingers; they were over her pants, but now they were sliding on either side of her clit instead of directly on it, and she couldn’t have helped the little moan that caused if she’d tried.

But Rey was impatient, and if this was the turn they’d taken, then they should take it all the way; clever fingers slid to the waist of his pants, finding how to release him by feel, sliding them down his hips first with her hands, then sliding her bare feet down his legs to pull them further down.

He looked at her oddly, arching a brow.

“Too many clothes,” she frowned up at him, as though this was obvious.

That made his lips twitch; his hand and all the rest of him left her to shuck his pants, leaving her room to undo her own, slide them down her legs, then kick them off. It was this that led her to be sitting up on the bed, naked, as she looked up at him standing at the foot of it, naked.

He was so still, so watchful, and she might have noticed it if she hadn’t been absorbed in the sight of him. Tall, broad, heavily muscled, with everything in proper proportion, and it dawned on her, then, what the snippets of conversation she’d caught amongst the resistance had meant.  
But when she looked at his face, took in all of him, she thought how strange and fitting it was that his form was so perfect.

\--

She was perfect.

Slim, maybe, but muscular; lean verging on wiry, but with a softness that hadn’t been there on Jakku – unsurprising, as he imagined she must have been eating better since leaving there. Curved and long-limbed and strong, in a pose that bore no pretense, one knee bent, one leg outstretched, seemingly neither aware of her allure nor self-conscious about her body. As she ever was, Rey was simply Rey, knowing no other way to be nor feeling any particular need to consider one.

But all of that was in a split second, because suddenly seeing her this way cut through him with the most acute sense of want he’d ever felt.

He pressed a knee into the bed, but she was meeting him, rising to her knees, looking at his shoulders as she skimmed her hands over them. He reached for her, tracing a thumb along her jaw, the other sliding to her hip. He meant to move smoothly, move slowly, but she was pulling him to her, crashing their bodies together, almost desperate, certainly hungry, as though there was no telling if they’d ever have this chance again.

With that thought, he returned her ardor, his lips descending on hers, sliding his arms around her, his cock hard, slicking precum against her belly as she parted her lips and slid her tongue against his. It was aggressive, vying for dominance, and he gave as good as he got, unabashedly using the advantage of his size to bend her backward, to suck her tongue, shifting them, pulling her leg up to his waist. It was easy enough for both of them to realign, his cock sliding against the wet cleft of her slit, rocking against her. Her moan as he ground against her clit with every upstroke made him so hard he thought he’d break, and his hands slid down to her ass, pressing her tighter to him as he pressed his mouth to her neck, devouring her with lips, teeth, and tongue, until his breath and his voice low against her ear.

“I want to fuck you, Rey,” he murmured, and he felt her shiver. “I want to fuck you, get my cock all the way inside you, feel you come all around me.”

She turned her head then, to sink her teeth just hard enough into his neck so he bucked into her, and she moaned appreciatively at the jolt to her clit. He pulled back just enough to look at her face, and she was looking up at him with a heavy-lidded, sly grin.

“I suppose we ought to get to work, then,” she said, and he smirked back at her, sliding his hand down between them to press himself against her slick cunt.

In the course of a life spent alone – more profoundly alone than would have made sense to anyone who might have thought about it – sex had been a secondary consideration. There was lust, there was desire, but they were unreliable, and had little to do with his true aims. There’d been a time when he’d thought sex could be the remedy, but he’d learned that it was more of a distraction than anything else. It was a biological urge that he indulged when convenient and ignored when not.

But he had never done it with a force sensitive before.

That there was no space between them despite the light years of distance was remarkable enough – but the feel of her hot and slick and tight around his cock as he pushed into her, as she rolled her hips on him, lips parted, eyes closed, head tilted back, moan on her lips – the feel of her, resonant and present and in vivid color, shades ranging from dark to light, her energy twining with his as he slid his hands to her hip, her thigh, shifting her to go deeper – deeper –

_Fuck._

**  
Rey couldn’t bear his patience, his slowness, his caution.

Kylo kriffing Ren, being _cautious_.

  
She opened her eyes, looked up into his, dark and deep and looking like he’d seen the faces of the gods, lips parted as he pushed further into her, and that made her breath catch and her teeth sink into her lip and her stomach flip, but she wanted more and more and more –

  
“ _Harder_ , Kylo,” she said, pressing her feet into the mattress and bucking her hips up at him, and it pushed him so deep he bottomed out and she gasped at the fullness and bit her lip.

  
“Harder?” he asked – he arched a brow as though he’d challenged her, but the timbre of his voice hinted that he wanted to make sure.

  
“Harder,” she gasped, twisting her hips and he sucked in a breath then, and snapped his hips into her and _yes, just like that_ , and again, yes, again, as he fucked into her, but more, because – because he was inside her, he was really inside her, and his hands were all over her skin, with palms rough from battle, and that friction against the smooth of her made her shiver and gasp and buck again as she slid her hands down his back, scratching him with short, hard little nails before she slid them to his front, to his chest, and pushed.

  
The advantage of being able to use the Force was that despite the disparity in their sizes, she was riding him now, his cock never leaving her, only now she could roll her hips just there, grinding into her clit, making her gasp. Kylo gave her a half-smile, eyes hooded, as his hands slid up her hips and to her breasts, and she leaned into his touch, lips parted and she rode him, as he palmed her tits, rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she rolled her hips again, again, finding a rhythm that started experimental but soon enough became rapid, bucking her hips back and forth, and little sounds escaped her throat and her nails dug into his chest and he hissed and his hands tightened a little as she rode him harder, faster, and his hands slid down to her hips and she kept fucking him, just like that, hitting that spot again and again and again until she was moaning, guttural cries to the rhythm, unabashed, unapologetic, feeling him all through her as she started to come but kept fucking him, wanting to extend it, make it go further, never let it stop, keep going, and she felt him grip her tighter vaguely and when he fucked up into her harder still it set it all off again as she felt him come, hot and hard inside her, and it was definitely at least as good as anything could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> You can send me asks, requests, or just wander around aimlessly at my tumblr: [something-pithy.tumblr.com](http://something-pithy.tumblr.com).


	4. a mock sun blazed upon her head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the Nick Cave for this fic. All of it!

Whether it was an unspoken, mutual agreement to allow themselves a few moments of fantasy, or a genuine lapse into what might have been in another time, another place, another universe, they gave it to themselves and each other – that sweet, unmarked time in the hazy afterward where he was still inside her, where she lay on his chest, her breath feathering across his neck, his fingers sliding through her hair.

But it was just a fantasy, and of course, Rey was the first to move.

She was gentle about it, which made it all the more noticeable. Moved carefully, gingerly – he moved to rest his hand on her thigh. No force, no grip, but a question in his eyes. It might have been hope except for how rapidly it seemed to darken.

“Rey…” he said.

“I – I need to go,” she said, sliding off of him, quicker now, looking for her clothes, not bothering to wonder if they were on her floor or his.

“Go where?” he asked, shifting to prop himself up on one elbow, watching her.

She cast a scowl at him.

“Don’t be funny.”

“I’m never funny,” he replied.

“Shocking,” she told him, still scowling as she found her pants and pulled them on.

“So are we going to pretend this never happened?” he asked. “Are you going to go back to the Resistance and pretend they can even begin to understand you? To know you like I do?”

That made her pause, a flare of heat, anger, pulsing through her.

“You don’t know me,” she snapped. “You don’t understand me.”

He sat up, his own temper flaring.

“Really? Is that what you’re going to tell yourself now? Convince yourself you’re too pure and full of light for me to understand?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped, reaching for her shirt. “You’re the one who’s convincing himself of the deep unfathomable darkness of his own soul.”

His jaw went tight, his eyes going darker.

“For someone so insistent that I’m taking the wrong path, it always seems to be you who does the leaving.”

She stopped, then, fists clenched.

“Do you think I want this?” she demanded. “Do you think I want to leave?”

He looked at her stonily. “For someone who doesn’t want to, you’ve got a remarkable aptitude for it.”

“ _Idiot_ ,” she hissed at him again, reaching for one of her boots, in her bunk. “After all that, after what we _felt_ , are you really so addled by your self-pity to think I want –” she waved her hand around their general vicinity. “—this? Don’t you think I’d rather stay with the one person I’ve ever – ever felt anything like _that_ with? After being alone my whole life?”

She scowled at him as she pulled on her boot.

“Idiot.”

He stood, then, moving toward her.

“You can have it, Rey,” he said quietly, stopping close enough to touch her, but not. “We can have it.”

She looked up at him as she reached for her other boot.

“Of course we can,” she said, shaking her head, shoving her foot into it. “But you won’t let us.”

He shook his head. “I’m not the one who keeps leaving,” he pointed out again.

She stood up, dressed and booted; him, only in his skin.

“I can’t stay where you are!” she exploded. “I don’t want to live in the dark, in a world of anger and pain and fear!”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he told her, moving closer, reaching out, but falling short of touching her. “It would be us, you and me, together, ruling –”

“And how would we rule, Ben?” His jaw went tight, his nostrils flared. “What would be the source of our power?”

He was silent.

“That’s the problem with the dark side, Ben – everything about it destroys love.”

It was as though she could see the wound she’d inflicted in his eyes; the hurt, the rejection, the betrayal was written so plainly on his face she almost took it back.

Almost.

She pressed her lips together and swallowed the lump in her throat. Tried to force her voice into evenness.

“I have to go,” she said again.

He didn’t reply, just watched her, taking deep breaths, fists clenched at his sides, anger and pain as naked as he was.

She looked at him for a long moment; waiting. Maybe – maybe hoping. Maybe just a tiny bit.

She was going to leave. She was. As soon as he said something.

But instead, he turned; he was the one who left this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> You can send me asks, requests, or just wander around aimlessly at my tumblr: [something-pithy.tumblr.com](http://something-pithy.tumblr.com).


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